Trouble logging in?We were forced to invalidate all account passwords. You will have to reset your password to login. If you have trouble resetting your password, please send us a message with as much helpful information as possible, such as your username and any email addresses you may have used to register. Whatever you do, please do not create a new account. That is not the right solution, and it is against our forum rules to own multiple accounts.

I'm sorry, but I dont think its kinda appropriate to delegate your work to someone else so you could compete in the contest.. My best advice for you is to ask in the SotM submission thread for a collaboration and restart over.

__________________

“This be the realest shit I ever wrote.” ~Tupac
So very dead right now.. but still breathing thank you.

I'm sorry, but I dont think its kinda appropriate to delegate your work to someone else so you could compete in the contest.. My best advice for you is to ask in the SotM submission thread for a collaboration and restart over.

I don't know; SOTM is a showcase of all the skills you have, not skills you can obtain while participating.

I mean, every technique needs to be practiced over time, perfected. If this would be your first time doing a distortion effect, won't it be better to rather not use it for a competition just yet? Dunno, but then again, that's just my opinion.

Anyway, most artists use either GIMP or Photoshop here, so there is a slight chance you won't get the answer you seek in time.

This image, I want to perspective-DISTORT the mirror so that the reflection looks more natural (this is for my SOTM entry) but I can't figure out how to do it.

I have Photoshop Elements 6, lunapic.com, and photobucket's editors at my disposal.

EDIT: I AM ASKING HOW TO DO THIS, NOT FOR SOMEONE TO DO IT FOR ME. (I would never ask someone to do it for me for a contest!)

Yeah, sorry to maybe burst your hopes for trying to find said tool, but Larthak is right. I myself use Gimp, and there is such a tool on my program. However, it is when it's manipulating a single layer, not the image as a whole. I was thinking that since Gimp had it, Photoshop, a more advanced program, would have had it also (it probably does, possibly under a different name)... I apologize if my suggestion to use said tool lead to an effort to find it, and thus result in a waste of time. I recommend re-opening the file and play around with the layer the mirror is on. If the original image has already been flattened, then there's nothing more I can say that try to start from scratch...

@ Sworn to Believe I would suggest you insted of Distorting the reflection, to blur ir. In Photoshop Element 7 ( I know you got PE6 but it's probably at the same place), it's on the ''Layer'' selection.

You'd be very hard pressed to get a decent vector without the pen tool. You could try using the 'magic wand' tool, although I'm not sure if that version of Photoshop it. If it does; then I can't see it being advanced enough for it to produce a decent render/vector.

I just remembered this thread!
Not sure if it belongs here as it's more of a guide than tutorial...but anyways...
Here's a guide to the basics of signature making(helps if you use GIMP instead of PS):

Spoiler for Sig guide:

The essential things in sigs are lighting, flow, focus, and depth. A disclaimer: the things I will talk about in this guide are stuff that I personally learned. I am in no way saying it is absolutely correct/without fault or the only way of doing it. If you have something you disagree about, feel free to contact me about it

Lighting: You need a light source in most of your sigs. Lighting should generally be close to your render/focus and can also help determine what the focus is. You want it to be visible, yet not overpowering. In real life, if someone takes a picture, most of that light will generally come from the sun. However, in sigs, you can place your light source anywhere. The upper corners of your sig are easiest(IMO). You can also put it at the bottom of the render to make it look like the light is shooting up. Some ways to do it(on Gimp) is to do a white(or whatever color you choose) to transparent gradient and set the shape on radial(circle-like). Or, use a soft brush and then gaussian blur it by 200 or so and it'll be good. Careful though, because if you cover your render partially with a blurred light source, it can make it seem like your render is LQ. Here is a good example of lighting.

Flow: Flow is pretty much the motion in a signature. It's where your eyes go when you first look at a signature. Now, you may think that only gifs have motion, but static sigs can too. Take my toshiro sig for example. Pay close attention to how I smudged. The flow is obviously from the bottom to the top right. Flow can be used nicely to compliment the flow of some of your renders. Don't know what I mean? Take a look at this render. See the direction that his cape is blowing? That is an example of flow in renders. With this render, you can smudge the background to go in the same way as his cape and create good flow in your signature.

Focus: Focus is what you want people to first see or see the most when they look at your sig. Most of the time, it is the render or a specific part of it. Of course, people will see all the other details, but your render/focus is the most important, not the text or the other stuff in the background. The positioning of your render can have a significant impact on your focus. In art, there exists the rule of thirds. What this basically states is that if you divide a piece of art into three parts equally vertically and horizontally, where the lines cross is where people focus on when they first look at a piece of art. Focus can also be created by creating depth(explained below) and sharpening the render. Don't sharpen too much though, because then the render will look weird like this. Be very careful when putting stuff over your focus. If done incorrectly, it can make the render/focus seem LQ, when it isn't in actuality. However, this isn't to say you shouldn't put stuff over you render, because this is often a helpful way to blend.

Depth: You know how when you focus on a specific object the rest of the things in your vision seem blurry until you focus on it? That's part of the definition of depth. Depth being able to see that something is closer than another. In a sig, you want to make sure that you can differentiate what is in front of what. Take this for example(the one with the girl Nu). I blurred the background and sharpened Nu a bit. See how you can obviously tell that Nu is closer than the bg? If you want to see the difference, look at sig 1 and sig 2. The first is with the background normal and the second one is blurred. Notice the difference? Also, as I stated above, this creates focus because you automatically focus on the render, and not the bg. If your sigs don't have depth, then they will look like when people try to take pictures of themselves taller than buildings and stuff.

Blending: Blending is the technique of making your render look like it fits in your signature. Look at signature 4 and signature 5. The first one looks a lot worse than the second one right? That's because it looks like the the render was just slapped onto a background that I made. The second one looks a lot more natural. On the second signature, I took the time and effort to blend my render into the rest of the signature. In short, blending makes your signatures look much much better. The best technique that I have found for blending so far is smudging. That is just me personally, though; you may find a lot of other good ways to do it.

Good ol trusty eraser tool .. and a bucket load of Ctrl+Z .. at the highest maximum zoom in possible!

D=

Layer Mask? Zooming in usually produces lots of artifacts when you zoom back out. I suggest using shift+clicks as much as possible to avoid creating rough edges. You can also press / to toggle quick mask view to get rid of those invisible bits here and there.

This small little walk through will be attempt to explain how I was able to make the effects around it. For anyone else curious, feel free to take a look as well. Please note that I used Gimp for this project, however I will do my best to try and also explain and pointing out other tools that perform similar functions as mine... Also note that this is my first time doing a tutorial, so I'm sorry if I'm a bit confusing or hard to understand...

Spoiler for What I did...:

So, this is what I got, as the starting canvas...

First off, I desaturated the image a bit and tinted the whole thing a color. In my case, purple. Then, I searched for images of puffs of smoke or clouds off of Google. They have to have a solid color surrounding them. Black works best, in my opinion. White and other colors may work to an extent, though isn't recommended. This is an example of what I used...

Spoiler for Example of Cloud/Smoke:

Similar images would work too. Your cloud should be along the lines of this. The black surrounding the cloud/smoke is what you want. A nice solid color surrounding it. That will represent the bordering design. Note that I didn't use the entirety of that image in my sig. I didn't want the entire sig to be engulfed in a thick border, so I scaled the smoke layer to be bigger than the signature, though small enough to see traces of the blackness surrounding it (a bit of noticeable subtlety is nice every now and then, right?). Now delete the cloud at the center (using Gimp, I went to "Color" then "Color to Alpha." Select white (or whatever color your clouds may be), and your original image will be surrounded by the blackness. For Photoshop, try Select/Color Range. Then with the left eyedropper click the area that you want to select (in this case the center cloud). Adjust the fuzziness slider until you get what you want and there you are.

So now you have something like this...

Next, we have the designs that will be replacing the black around it. Make a new layer and get a design (in my case, I took some abstract art from Google) to cover the canvas. For Gimp, go to the layer mode on the layers window, and select "Darken only (if the bordering area is white or a light color) or "Lighten Only" (for black and dark areas). Note that if the area around an image is light, the render/character's face and/or skin will often be covered by the design when adjusting, so I prefer black.
For Photoshop (please note that I'm still uncertain about this) the process is almost the same as Gimp. Selecting the blending modes right under the layers tab, there should be options labled "Lighten" and "Darken" which should work in the same way as Gimp would. With the darkened layer (or lighter) bringing color to the smokescreen around the image, you'll now have a fading, designed effect surrounding the picture. Go ahead, maybe a smudge here and there... Just add some finishing signature touches, and there you have it.

This sig is not available as a freebie. Only Sworn to Believe (the person this sig was intended for) may use it, unless said otherwise.

Hope I was able to answer your question, Star-Wing. And to anyone else, I hope this was at least remotely useful in attempting to try out a new styling effect.